I was at at book store the other day and was checking out a few books that looked pretty decent. I'm looking for a good book to identify the real insects to the tied version. The book I found that looked the best was "handbook of hatches". Also saw a book called "the fly tying bible" it was spiral bound and had I believe 100 patterns in it. Just wondering if anyone has seen or read these books and if they recomend them. thanks for the help!

I've seen teh "bible" one its ok..the benchside reference is big and expensive but if you don't mind the investment (I got mine as a gift) It will answer most any tying question you have...If you read a recipe and you think, "how'd they do that?" You can look up that particular technique in the book.

I bought the fly tying bible when I was first starting out. The thing I liked about it was how it rated flies by the level of difficulty. It kind of gives you a sense of how your tying abilities are coming along. Other than that it wasn't the greatest in terms of instructions. I bought another book that was like the benchside reference in how it described a lot of different methods, but minus about 700 pages and no where near as detailed.

I've picked up a few books from ebay at very reasonable prices. I especially like an Art Flick book I got a few months ago. It actaully has several famous tiers giving instructions on various flies. There are little hand drawn instructions on the sides of the main text for a few flies, the no hackle comes to mind.